were 20 years ago, sorry to hear. this was one robust place your. but i am going to do is being in a bookstore and being in this intellectual capitol, i going to read a few little portions of the book, which is something i don't do all that much. i certainly don't do it on cable television in my four minutes of screaming. closely being screamed that. tonight i'm going to read a little bit. talked about the book, and then i do the thing which is loveliness from me, which is open it up to questions. this is the kind of group that you just want to yak with, and i'm sure the good questions, a lot of publicity. the at this point a lot of people have of faugh he. we talked about the book which is a thing of loveliness. the history here, the recent history, of course, is that the white house got its copy on friday, prior to publication.

this is now widely known, i gather. and the new york times said gun at the day before, so the disclosure, some of the disclosures. there are lots in here that wasn't, of course noted in those first noisy offerings, but that became kind of this death storm of push and shove prior to the publication of the book. by the time the book was ready to be in the bookstores the following tuesday, a few interesting things that happened the president and the white house has clearly seen some of the signature potent than the one from a person i no near and dear to all of you, larry summers. not here tonight. and where he says, and i think now famously after an economic brief he said this quite often. the home loan riff as it was called where he would leave said

briefing on various subjects and he would turn to every solid and say, we are home alone. there is no adult in charge. bill clinton would never make these mistakes. now, a history for a seventh printing of issues. this, i think, even for him, you know, a pioneer charts. interesting because that has become somewhat troubled people. it is framing arguments. that is a particular skill, and people wondered, is he from the strike? why we home alone to make anything but harmelin? this is one of the things i posit in the book. he discusses his feelings about larry's home alone ridge and can actually set a specific instance where they discussed it. the fallout from that. he posits, he opines about this. i say at the end of the book, you know, the case for government is to somehow less

than fear that all of us, i think, understand that there is no one in charge. the things we face in this country, the global forces the buffaloes are beyond anyone's control, even managed. the case for government is that that is not the case. someone is in charge, so we can sleep at night and get on with our lives. -- an a for effort, and it's far from over. so having said that, let me read a couple of interesting parts. and did not get to read much, but this book follows this president prior to his being this president from his days as a senator. section 2007. you try to fit together pieces

that create a kind of verisimilitude of the life that we see day-to-day. you do it in present tense. i try not to look back saying, you know, if we knew now what we knew then or in hindsight obviously that's true. i tried to walk in issues of character. all five bucks a. you can only know what they knew and will we know at this moment. i get 30 points behind. interesting guy, a great speaker . the 2004 address, but he is kind of catchy. this is a working very well. he as an economic meeting on the first of office, not the intima circle. the low off to the side to mothers gathered. this sigalert, this economy, well, it is not always cracked up to be.

in some ways these advisers lay out the evidence that after 30 years of flat lining in come or even declining income for many groups, you know cuddle we are living on borrowed time. the response was to load up on debt, lots of dead, more than 100% of gdp, well over, more than we have ever had burdening us up to now. of course will street created a terrific model for this, this great debt trading machine that was so profitable. by 2007 financial services account for 41% of general profits. debt in the old debt equity is outnumbering equity for one in terms of the balance sheets and the profits of the big financial houses. and really the model, on to say this briefly, the model that everyone now understands the embraced in that kind of capital cartel of the financial capital of new york, and this was about

true capitals, washington, new york, fighting it out for direction of the country. they have been fighting since the beginning of the republic. new york had built an extraordinary confection where that capital for many good decades in america and some real robust at growth a profit, that capital is mostly getting invested overseas. the margins are terrific overseas. no environmental regulations in china, former union and your going to jail. frankly, a child labor, terrific profit margins, really good stuff. that is where the money was going. meanwhile in large measure america of burdened even then in 2007 was being shorted. that was the place weaseled the. not just that, your father or grandfather. a new innovation and that. that meant that basically you could sell the, all kind of debt

compactors, securitized. we did not really know them in 2007. the key was to my could sell in a profit from it, but not be on the book because i no longer held the rest. and no longer was accountable with the seller of debt. it moved hand-to-hand, often to unsophisticated buyers. i already made my money as the big wall street house of the big bank. and then when it goes down, and they knew it was going to give us some point in much better -- in large measure, essentially i'm off the hook. the profits of privatized on disasters are socialized to my government will step in. the too big to fail members to come. obama's sees this. he sees this to the eyes of characters who are near him. the economy is all about just like a rickety structure with a fresh coat of paint. when a good speed bump, won best of one and that is going down.

his trouble. he gets a call. the fourth of august, is 46th birthday, he gets a call from a what -- was street titan who adores him. he is the real deal. and he just has a nonsexual crush on this guy. he would take a bullet from. a lot of people gathered around obama in this two dozen seven times from quite stunned periodic character. the heaven and on lichen and come memory. and his standing on the fourth of august, the flying debt of 110 for lou -- phil lazar. hit the door and a voice-over, for better and a small library, a de-stalinization system on the boat. he's up on the flying debt. a hedge fund manager, paul going

bad. about zero weeks and a half before everyone starts. this guy, the hedge fund guide is cursing into the phone. and robert wolfe, adviser to obama, really, a contributor, he ran a lot of the wall street money raising for obama. he sees it and goes up to the flying deck of this boat, a deck at the top with the little pool on it. he calls obama on his birthday. an income of their friends. he's as happy birthday, and men. they chat for a minute. just call on his birthday. then he says to me know, i have not been an adviser to you. i've been a contributor and friend. he have to see what i'm seeing from here. we have a market driven disaster coming. it is a once-in-a-lifetime event

that will change everything. and he lays it out for him and play speak, but quite brilliantly. obama's sees, he gets a glimpse of the future on his birthday. where is he on the state? he is down in atlanta speaking at the southern christian conference convention, another martin luther king speech. this very day. and obama, of course, the students of king, understands what he said at the end of his life that was often not embraced by others in the movement of economic justice. so let me just read one page. >> barack obama in just a few days caught sight of an emerging catastrophe that would again draw to the issues of economics and justice. no one in washington's power structure had been presented with a similarly dire and cuddle prediction from an actual

captain of wall street bank. the latter group having too much of state for that level of candor. in such a market driven tidal wave would surely be headed for the dense shoreline, not only days before the economists had so happy described rickety structures, especially painted with easy credit, but jen to beneath that house so much of the country's economic livelihood. did government in its weakened state have the power to hold this catastrophe at bay? if such a title rate it -- tidal wave rick devastation, my it recast basic moral equations which power and wealth have long been distributed and perhaps even harold a rebirth of the public ideal when king spoke of giving democracy its full growth of meaning he was in the midst of his own struggle with a certain duality.

the transcendent character who stood at lincoln's feet to tell of a dream deeply rooted in the american dream, and the man who spent the ensuing years of his life walking, struggling to conjure the righteous actions with which to make real that earlier days of fusion of noble purpose. a week after that national cathedral speech in washington king's death in memphis will leave behind only the image of a man, familiar as an old friend giving voice to an extensive during, perhaps with enough to the bridge americans on the raleigh between noble ideal and ignoble action between principle and practice, word and deed. try not to harness and the service of tangible change. if he could manage it he might

finally cast a promissory note the spanned his right hand raised at the other end of the mall as the culmination of the centuries long struggle for civil equality. and as the torchbearer for king's second stream, equality of opportunity upon which to sound a true democracy. obama had seen a longing in the eyes of the crowds already. though he had not yet found a way to tap this long, he understood on some level that his fortunes rested on how he could craft his narrative and himself into a sure vessel for that hundred. the forces of change are now play. obama finished up the conversation with wolf, robert wolfe, his wall street and former and turned his attention to policy that night. like so many he had given it would strive to conjure the spirit of king are least the spirit embodied in that well

worn image of the man. but now those hard questions of economic justice gathered around him, those questions of the second, less familiar king. they gathered in the air like the clouds of a coming storm. obama gets a glimpse, and he does act. he is ahead of the curve. he gathers around him in the fall of 07 and the spring of 08 and ecumenical team led by paul volcker, democrats and republicans, bill donaldson, that fec cheese and the bush, robert rice, one of your favorites here. they're all together. the ubs wall street tighten. there together because they are afraid. people are feeling the shutters on the landscape, feeling it shake. and obama, right from the start, is saying that -- sang the things that almost no one else

is saying. many to reform financial capital, reform the system of credit. the american economy rather than in some it was against it. to kill off the volatility that we feel even now as we run up and down these problems of fear. really his guide. almost two years. he is the kind of avatar, the kind of champion of tough love, you know, after greenspan's demise of the most part, having pushed for the bubble across 20 years, one bubble to the next ..

he returns to stand behind obama, credibility. this is sized up by the summer of 2008 as trouble, trouble for another team, called a team b and that's the team lead for the most part i rub her group and/or a tanned and tied to wall street. rubin of course the former goldman chair, goldman chief,

treasury secretary under clinton and now the citigroup chief. wall street saw it as a bulk or lead team and they said my god if they get into office, with this new president, we are toast. plain and simple. and they applauded their counterattack. the counterattack was get our people in the key jobs. interestingly something i found out what sort of surprised me and there are dozens of disclosures here but some of them you are like really? my goodness. robert rubin was offered in the latter days of the campaign a dollar a year job and to have an actual office in the west wing. obama was thinking hey i might win this thing and of course by the late fall, but diversity group had collapsed and that is untenable but ruben's left and right hand, tim geithner and larry summers, will they get the jobs. what happened there? whited folk are and that team

get washed away, team a in favor of team b? obama i'm sure will perfect on this in his memoirs that there is a lot of that at this point. the things that are very natural happened. here is a man who is not an expert in finance or economic. of course is an extraordinarily brilliant man, but you know, he broke into the lead in september by besting mccain on these very issues. he spent so much time with this wall street gang and with his advisers. mccain is no match for obama. even hank paulson republicans are like gee, that guy kind of gets it. and this other fellow mccain, he is not even buzzword compliant on this stuff. and when obama breaks into the lead, the book is sympathetic and it's obama. you are trying to feel, was he feeling? if you feel what he is feeling as best as a writer can render it, it just says what i call

good enough reasons. i have a rule for all my books i call it the good enough reasons rural and i learned it dealing with gang leaders actually my first book. you know was so easy to be judgmental. these guys are wreaking havoc. i said no, no, hold on. if i am judgmental i don't understand for good enough reasons. good enough that intent was the action you can see. they may not be your reasons are my but they are good enough and if you know them, you can know a person almost as well as you can know another and you get why they do what they do. it often is quite clear and discernible, even rational in some cases. i am always looking for the good enough reasons of all the characters and i want to know that for obama, the central actor of this time. youyou you know all of a suddene breaks into the lead just like one of those bad robert redford candidate moment. what do we do now? he has got to own washington.

he has to tame new york. he has to keep us from what looks like a coming depression. and cautioned, the cousin of fear, grips us. how could it not? at that moment the more progressive activist crew, again democrats and republicans both, team a who i don't know if i can manage that tycoon. he goes with team b. they are very good at speaking the words of caution. men who have been there, we served bill clinton. we know where the levers are to push. and they get in their. larry summers, chief economic adviser, tim geithner treasury secretary, rahm emanuel chief of staff. he was warned against emanuel and obama didn't listen. backbone campaign, remember the whole thing between hillary and obama the judgment versus experience? remember the debate about?

hilleary settled -- experience? obama said judgment. a nice retort. he seemed to to you by a man disabuse with the clarity of judgment. obama now would probably say experience is a sport and -- is important as well. [laughter] but he makes judgment to bring in this team and significantly the dye is cast. there are moving moments here. i was at the last rally. his last speech of the campaign. my wife and i both went in manassas virginia, a 20 month run, a heroic run really. out of the midst come out of nowhere to capture the imagination of a nation in fear and that last rally in manassas virginia was, you could not be, you could not avoid being moved. i mean my eyes welled up.

you know, 10:00, 10:30 at night, a chilly night, his last speech before he flies to chicago to vote, play basketball and see how the cards fall. and here we are just four miles away from the battlefield. where 147 years before, the rebel yells out to start an earlier chapter of our often painful american journey. and now on this night, people come from all over. not just the professional types like us in washington. it took us five hours to go about 20 miles. and we left the car miles away to just walk, but also people from trailer parks in northern virginia who can't afford to live near where we live. you know and of all races. latino americans, asian-americansasian americans, african-americans certainly and then there are guys with confederate flags and gun racks.

they are there too. 100,000 people in the field and obama steps up in that stage and the cry that went up from those hills. i can still hear it. i think many of us can hear it. which is why some of this is hard. and maybe we were part of this too. of course we are. this is a conversation between a leader and a people. we are all in it together. how could we not have painted our yearnings on this guy, and the way this little tableau rosso withal that he was able to draw from us and send back to us in those extraordinary turns of powerful rhetoric. but the next night in grant park, you can already feel him stepping back. the acute just burden of it, the

pressure of it. he tells axelrod, no fireworks. to celebratory. i mean he has waited his whole life for this moment. the man wrote his autobiography at 33. but he is already a step away assessing it. he gives a speech which is a great speech, a fine speech. the one like the night before. i was there. and then he walks off the stage and michelle is waiting for him. it's her moment too. she puts up her hand her the high five and he gently takes it and he says no, no, no. he is feeling the burden of history. he is saying, am i up to this? and even the anon girl speech, 2 million people freezing their off, screaming, cheering, people dancing in capitals around the world. it was a flat speech.

people were disappointed, but whatever. i was there for the moment. i think reagan would have done -- shudder to think what reagan would have done. he is the inspiration. just go with it. but it is amazing when he gets into office. it's almost like he is not going to manage his expectations any more. there is no way to manage them. just live with them. he couldn't predict what this was like, to be the actual president, to be in the corner was room and you can see in february and march, obama saying i can do this. i can manage this. and his object, his focus is of course not just on health care which he says will be the priority. guess, that will be my legacy but then of course the great crisis, and melting economy and the collapse of financial system

and of course a crisis of jobs that we still live with. and he did some studying, some reading. he was reading a lot of paul krugman. in the economic briefings it was larry and tim but obama was sort of self schooling. give me a copy of that. yeah, that is good. what does he come up with? he says look, i want to be sweden, not japan. that was his big construction. sweden as we know bailed out of its banks. they nationalize them, they close them and kill the wild speculation is the business model in the financial system and they let the banks recover slowly. they basically turned banks into a boring spine of an economy rather than a casino. sweden wars back. japan did with we are doing now. just bail them out. restore them, use government safford as best you can. we can't live without whatever they are, whatever that business model is.

that's two decades of stagnation in japan and we are now three years into a very similar model. obama gets this and he says i want to be sweden, not japan. now what is happening is havoc inside this economic team. summers and geithner, old friends just like a manual, these guys have known each other forever. conversations with one another is important in some ways is anything they say to the president. well summers and geithner embraced this notion of hippocratic risk, first do no harm. this is a very difficult to challenge. almost everything does harm that is bold. obama hears this. fine but here is what i want to do. he wants to nationalize, take down, wind down some of the big tanks and reopen them. he wants to kill off the fear that we'll have another disaster from one of these too big to fail banks. that is the fear that is holding us back. keeping us from building in growing and investing.

geithner opposes it. even summers jumps on the side of the president and he is against geithner. it is everyone against geithner. the president, kristi christie roemer, larry summers and the guy with his finger in the dyke. advisers are there to advise. they are experts. that is why presidents hire them. whether economics our national security. they are supposed to know more than the president. the president listens to what they say and ultimately he then has the lonely spot of making the decisions. in this battle, in mid-march the president, and 70-75% approval rating. obama has political capital. that happens once in a generation and he says i want to be roosevelt. i want to rise to it. i want to take down these big eggs and show accountability flows in both directions in

america. they did it to themselves. we have got many to many banks. they can be smaller and we need to show a kind of justice. people are hurting. this will be the step forward. basically tim geithner thinks he doesn't know what he is talking about. he needs to be protected from himself. after this meeting where tim talks about his plan called the stress test, some of you know about this, basically a way to support the banks with the federal purse. tim wants to carry that forward and obama says fine. ultimately ends up backing off a little bit. just the citigroup with 200 million less in them the t.a.r.p. fund. i want to plan on how to do it. a month passes. they are in the oval office. i have meeting after meeting in the book. every person cooperated with this book. there is not a person in the

room that is not in here core operating. everyone affirms all the stories. make no mistake. he is in the white house and throwing out what we in washington call nondenial denial. remember that from all the presents men? is that a nondenial denial? i don't remember that. i was on venus that day. yes, that is where i was. it's hearsay. what's that mean? i don't know. in this meeting a month later, the president says, what about that citigroup? the wind-down, the resolution plan? that's a key arrow in our quiver. summers looks at roemer, back and forth nervously at one another. they have been watching over the last couple of weeks, something is happening in treasury. finally christie roemer says mr. president, actually there isn't any plan for citigroup. obama says, there had better be.

what do you mean there is no plan? all of a sudden roemer feels emanuel's gaze on her. the meeting breaks up, and emanuel and summers huddled. emanuel is livid. he says i can't believe she said that without tim geithner being here to defend himself. forget about the material issues. summers reports to roemer minutes after. christie, rahm was livid that you would save that without tim to defend himself. jesus, rahm she's right. there isn't a plan. i asked the president about this. it wasn't an easy moment in our interview at the end of the process. i said, you are agitated. i by a notch or agitated would be the exact word i would use. what did you say to tim? i don't remember exactly.

the bureaucracy wasn't moving as fast as i wanted. it is a term of art i suppose. this stuff is just hard, wrong. it was hard. harder than i could have imagined to come up with solutions. i talked to geithner too. he is in the book. you can read it yourself, to a page is. he affirms that he did what is shown in internal memos. he slow walk to the president. what does that mean? it is reflected in mmo in february 2010 from shadow chief of staff, a brilliant washington actor who who was chief of staff in the obama senate office where he talks about the fact that mr. president you need to assert accountability in this building. when the treasury department or the economic team disagrees with one of your decisions, not his posits, not his wanderings, his visions, they relitigate the whole policy meaning they ignore you.

this can't be. this cannot stand. and even after that, when they disagree, they slow execution. they dragged their feet. you need to assert leadership. you need to take control of the building. this forms a blueprint that helps obama learned to be president. it takes a year, year and a half, even for skilled men or the future women, former governors, executives to manage this most complex managerial organism. it is a matter of growth. the bad luck obama and some might say looking back for us in the wider country. he arrives at a moment of crisis and opportunity, began and yang there. without any of that key experience in executing power.

it is hard to get anywhere to execute power. but he doesn't manage it. and there is a lot of chaos in that first year. it is not just a takedown of the banks. you know, meeting after meeting he is essentially trapped in the larry summers debate society. some people might buy tickets for that but right now we are at a difficult time and they go back and forth. do we want to do deficit reduction or do we want to do new stimulus? back and forth, can decide. obama naturally again yet in issues. he says i need the comfort of consensus essentially. i want my team to come to consensus so i feel the confidence to make these tough decisions. i am going to put, of course he's an extraordinary interlocutory. he is pushing and he doesn't get consensus and the result is paralysis.

and he is in the doldrums and very little occurs during that seminal first year. all the way to 2010, rouse writes the memos. obama, he is seeming to grow and reads deeper and that whole team is out the door in the next couple of months, the first team he brings. after the midterms, obama, people said it was like light shone in the windows in the white windows in the white house. peter rouse became the chief of staff. the guy had known obama from the start. obama did something rather poignant and moving. some other presents a the moment of doubt, the moment of confusion, he says to one of his aides, don't want the rest of those aides to see me like this. i am just not sure of myself basically. better they not see. you know, my god. who of us would have managed

better? rows becomes the staff and obama says i can do this myself. he engages yea or nay. you may disagree but he engages on the bush tax cuts. he trades it or a lot of stimulus, no doubt about it in terms of unemployment benefits and in terms of payroll tax. there is a boost. he says i make the trade in and he does it himself with mcconnell. he passes something like 82-16 or something in the senate, unheard-of. and his number start to go up. then he gets that extraordinary speech which many of you heard after the tragedy, after gabby giffords was shot in tucson. then he brings in the new staff and interviewing them in february, he is god bin laden in the crosshairs. so at the end of the book obama is feeling a kind of a recovery,

a resurgence. he talks about that in the last -- . some of it is you know, both eliminating but a little unsettling too. i will just read the last part and then we will open it to questions. what is interesting about this last interview is, he is dealing with this issue of confidence. that is why the book is called confidence men. there are some folks on wall street who i sort of call conmen. i don't think any of them are here, but yes. gambling in casablanca but the fact is in the other capital, our political capital, in the battle between the two capitals, obama understands, as we all do that confidence is at the realm. it has been that way throughout our history. roosevelt restores it, establishing his legacy. kennedy sparks it with a great

robust. that you watch and reagan of course is a master at exuding confidence. no matter what the underlying facts may be. and we have a moment in the interview. i will tell you this funny little story because it is something that has been mentioned on some of the coverage but i've never really got through it. you know when the interview, 45, 46 minutes essentially obama in the chair and i'm on the couch and there is an media person at the end of the couch. something happened which was a stroke of good luck. i am at a bookstore just like this one. it is called politics and prose. i don't know if you have ever been there. it's in washington. at our harvard bookstore and i ride in the basement café. i have an office at my house but i kind of need to get out sometimes. just to see another living, breathing person so i write sort

of the people there. i'm like an exhibitionist writer. i'm writing to an audience. it's a pretty good audience, just like you so i'm writing there and tapping away and the guy kind of bookstore comes. jimmy carter's upstairs. whatcom are you kidding? he is up there signing books. carter is doing a reading but he stood in the preliminary signing. well, okay, so and i'm about to interview obama. i know i'm going to be interviewing him sitting, so i say okay. this is a bit of an opportunity here. carter has written this book called white house diaries. is carter, i go up there and i see him and he is up there signing way and i say hi president carter. suskind, how are you doing? he is the most affable guy in the world. i could eat apples off of his head. is only that day, my height. that's saying something. these white house diaries, what's going on? here's the thing.

icy obama is dealing with a lot of the same issues we dealt with in the 70s. i said i have got diary entries on a lot of the stuff so i'm just going to get the diary out. i am like, really? so i grab one of the diaries and i am cribbing fast, flipping pages. so i write on the diary entry that he pens in their, his last debate with reagan. it is very emblematic. carter writes in their basically, we have our policy points and we talked about what we have done for constituents and we are going to get them to the polls so i think i won. reg reagan did his optimism thing but i think we won this thing. a month later there is another diary entry which basically says dif -- disregard previous entry.

[laughter] i asked carter about this. you hit a good do oh, no doubt. so i said what's going on there? you know what it is. it is confidence. i understand that word, really. i thought about that for 30 years. reagan got that. but you know i thought this obama guy, i thought he understood how confidence works. i'm not so sure now. so in the oval office, i break out the story to obama. he says, really? now of course comparing oneself to carter is for no good reason, you know, a dangerous thing to do for a president. carter is the thing you don't want to be and i think that is

wrong but it is just the way it is. obama carter as i bring it up. you know he says carter and clinton suffer from what i call the policy wonks disease. he calls it a disease. sort of like, you know, we feel like we are going to win like in high school and high school baseball. you know and he says i getting over that. i am not quoting him exactly. i don't want to be legislator in chief. you know i've got it technocratic inclinations i am working on. the idea, very much like kennedy with his best and brightest with halberstam get gets into office. bring the smartest people in the room with a sterling credentials and you close the door and you are going to come up with some beautiful glorious integrated solution and it ain't going to happen. it doesn't happen. obama has spent two plus years

locked in the policy room and he says it ain't enough. and then he addresses a president who is kind of floating nearby near the ceiling, reagan. let me say, read what he says and then will we done and we will talk to each other. heat, reagan obama says was very comfortable playing the role of president. and i think part of that was really his actors background. republicans hate that sort of thing but that is what he said. obama said he portrays a kind of, and his tone, hinted and the. it would be so easy to flip that switch. but as he edged closer to reagan, obama seemed to squirm a bit in his chair, trying to get

comfortable. looking back over his life obama says, the key in his life always took pride, obama and pushing against articles and not engaging in a lot of symbolic gestures but rather thinking practically. obama takes pride in his life and i think the evolution that happened in the campaign was me recognizing that if i was going to be a successful candidate, then the symbols and gestures mattered as much as what my ideas were. and who could deny reagan's mastery, his actors grid? this is me talking about symbols and gestures. no one can know what it's like to be president until they are one. and then they have to decide how much of what they feel sitting in that lonely corner less room they ought to reveal. people deep down suspect that the life of a nation like that of each of us, is shaped by

forces forces well beyond our control, beyond earnest efforts and best laid plans, just as we all tend to learn at some moment of discovery that those grown-ups who once seemed so assured and certain were neither. as the nation wrestled with this period of maturation, obama considered how to reconcile his hard truth with truths with a working definition of confidence in a world that often merited anything but. the age-old fear after all is that we are in fact -- there is no one in charge. the role of government is to make a convincing case to the contrary so everyone can get on with their lives and manage a good nights sleep. obama, a brilliant amateur, arrived to powers pinnacle, believing he would make his case with a show of demonstrably

correct answers to complex problems, solutions. he would confidently executed launching what he called a new era of responsibility. ..

of course this is after the 45 minute interview about how his confidence has been bruised. not about you being confident. leading in this office is a matter of helping the american people feel confident. think you for listening and less talk and what your confidence in your q&a. thank you. ." >> to first? , but you? what you say your name. stephen charlotte. >> why is denim still there? >> why is geithner still there? >> see is the one that pulled it back. he is still there. you read the paper that obama wanted to stay. >> you know, it is a question i get asked a lot. their relationship is in the book. i do go through it.

dinner is a very canny player. you know, he has a very interesting manner, a bit of a passive aggressive bank. he laughs and the kutcher throat. so, you know, that's what it takes. you know, we are the world's most powerful nation. in the age of history. it takes. >> skill set to survive out there, and geithner does survive. interestingly, he sizes up the situation. you know, he sees that his old pal, larry summers, who i think, well, it is clear he is not happy as things progress. wanted to be bernanke, wanted the fed chairman show. geithner actually, i report in the book, ran the selection process for whether or whomever place bernanke. summers could not be involved, leading candid. part of his deal coming in to take a so-called staff job, he had once been treasury

secretary, after all, meaning that in the white house, i will do this, but when bernanke's term comes up in the summer of, you know, it's going to be decided this summer of the next year, your man. i think the summers says obama said, yes, you will be, and he feels a bit betrayed. also, he knows gator in the selection process. i think somers feels that geithner was stayed in his praise of summers in the fed job it was a breach. meanwhile, geithner is watching. his best and brightest high i.q. larry summers debates society. obama is ever more feeling trapped and. kellner said himself up as the default. he often does not say much of a lot of these meetings, holding his cards close. and obama is frustrated and often not sure what to do, he often defaults to a geithner plan for caution, usually a plan for not doing a great deal, plan for keeping the system in

america, the structure as it is. ultimately geithner ends up being the last man standing. their relationship, it will be in, i'm sure, both men's memoirs, something of great interest in washington. geithner did want to leave. obama said police state, and it may have to do with the kind of relationships that you do see with presidents. you know, that loneliness that obama talks about. you know, sometimes you need someone to come in to remind you enclose the door and just tell. despite its me again. while we in this box. go over that part a third time. and i think ten that a lot of that. and not in the kind of way that larry did, when you see obama trying to get information, reports without them going to summers. yes. so he can challenge summer's more effectively in the meetings. summers is supposed to get everything. but he is saying, just give that

directly to me. is that okay? will that did you into trouble? >> csn i can do that for you, mr. president. you know, you know, i don't want you to get into trouble. and he's like, here is a president. anything you want. yes. but part of it was that obama was trying to muscle up to challenge summers and geithner, but especially summers. geithner watches all of this and in supplying it beautifully. okay. another question. how what you? [inaudible question] >> revolving around leaders. and, your thesis is that obama's philosophy is that government, the essence of government is the force that will allay. it is not obama. is obama the icon? the night before manassas he was the moses the what part the see

of government. that is the expectation that has never been at. he just seceded all of that power to harry reid, the congress, and he is perceived consistently is being overly passive, to a consensus seeking. in fact, leaders this decision making. >> that is a great point, and he is the man. i am france. he is the guy at that moment. again, it is a kind of political capital. you know, i had lunch today with bob kavner, a gap here, and he sang, the only a virginity in 80 years. this is more than generational opportunity to alter the basic imbalance or structures in american life. what is interesting is that i think obama, and he talks about i want to be a more dynamic leader at the end of the book, but what he does not take into account which is, i think more right to your points to divvied

you're not going to come up with a clear, brilliant, pristine, integrated solution sitting in the policy shop and an unveiling and convince especially republicans, you know, that that is brilliant, and i'll follow you. it's like the upton sinclair thing. i am not going to get it right, but when someone salary is based on opposing group, they're going to continue to oppose you. nothing personal, just the way it is. obama still thinks he is so persuasive that they have to give. well, they don't. what is not given credit is the dynamism of. others, just get out there. to say this is what you want to do and fight and of french. what you will see is that the tumblers will click add. that dynamic process is one that creates the opportunities of. obama was not doing that. ultimately at think he is frustrated because of this.

the moment that is fascinating. he knows best thing i can give an amazing speech. he knows that. that is my skill. time and again what he finds after that greece they start. i mean, imagine this. the words of a president can call us. our arch enemy's to become a place of disruption. just the words. but since we had no policy, we need policies to harness. he sees it, but you can't manage it. the health care speech is one more thing.

it's fascinating. obama at the end of the summer when he does not engage on health care cost my number one priority in any vanishes, nothing happens for months. tom-alan the book. where are there. he is mr. health care, and obama's right-hand. he doesn't get the big job, but he still an adviser. i can't get a call in for two months. it's a black : there. he is losing in march and april and in to make the most important two months in 15 years on health care after he steps up saying this is my priority with all of his promethean power, obama, nothing happens. and he forfeits that. he gives it to max baucus in the senate, that the party is picking up in the summer. obama's is a need to give a speech, big one, a joint session , september 2009, but his speech of his first year. he says no, you have to wait until the end. you only have one shot. he says, no, going to do it.

make the decision. it does make a lot of these, but this is what he makes. calls in the brilliant speech writer. he met both the guess 14 to 15 years old, of little. how that happened? but he's brilliant. and then of a bond. they have this bond, you know, because he's kind of the fusion, the use sort of movement that followed obama. he gives them the letter. obama puts that in there. what's interesting at this point is that there is a little debate going on along side obama because obama says, i want a policy. out there to harness the speech. meaning, we have a fully architect is health care policy. they had it on the shelf. you know, they basically said, we are not going to be too specific. we will get a shot of this. that was emanuel's position.

still smarting from what happened with clinton. he is like, i want the full plan released contemporaneously with the speech in front of the joint session. i made my decision. and he is back to writing the speech. there is a debate going on because the manual is like, he is wrong. he does not know what he is talking about. we are releasing a 2-page booklet. sheep. that's it. they're like palin no, that's the whole plan. no, to pedal points. right up to the speech there is a meeting where there are debating this. obama, he arrives in the meeting. he clearly thinks they're releasing the whole plan. he's the president. you ought to know what's going on. mr. president, emanuel, clams up.

astonishing. he knows what it looks like, i think. you know, he is the smartest guy that you will ever meet, but he cannot seem to manage it. now, i will just say this. he says he gets it now. you know, voters and the rest will only tell day-to-day and week to week. another question, two more questions and we're done. how about you over here? >> you know, obama wrote put to books. his autobiography, which is fantastic. a beautiful piece of work. the other one is the audacity of hope. i challenge anyone to go through that book and find out what obama believes. i think -- >> you bet. ascendency is done. >> the major problem, look what happened to the debt ceiling. that is where obama really, really went down into the deaths did in that debt ceiling he had,

the 14th amendment he could have crushed the republicans. and then, fight it out. he didn't. >> okay. well, this is a broad question about obama having written two books and our friend here says, you read both of them and you're not really sure what he believes in terms of some of the central issues, all the principal -- principles. the broad ideas in terms of the real goods, it's not there. also, this idea that in the moment, in a clinch the commission pitch in add water and makes. he was acting on conviction. i've heard that, you know that

is the way power and interest are rate in this country, to balance them when some interests of so much more ravenous and powerful than others by a essentially gets to the same solid equations and have a love for 30 years of drift in the country whether it the natural course correction. one more question. it. >> evicted from my apartment. through the winter and early spring of 2007 as a result of the mortgage foreclosure, sort of, you know, foretold what was coming in a not very happy way,

but interesting way. i, like in this situation -- well, i summarize it in the following way. and you mentioned fdr a couple of times in your talk. we needed in fdr, and we got obama. if you try to think about the differences between fdr and obama one of them that he will talk about is, below the tonight . on fdr, the most exclusive club interestingly just a couple blocks down this very street. he was rejected. his family had been members. he came from my class, and he understood that he did not need to be afraid of challenging that same class. obama might be understood to a degree. that is somebody who really wants to be accepted by that class. now, that may help to and

explain some of this, and i would be interested in your view of that. the difference in the political character of these two individuals, but, then, there is a larger explanation which individual character really is not sufficient to explain the political movements that would have -- >> the question. >> yes. roosevelt connected. but obama does not seem committed to in any way. >> look. you give voice to what a lot of people feel. and also, you give voice to the pain that the people are feeling around the country. you know, the unemployment rate. that is not -- 16 plus 17%. the people and still suffering under enormous loads of debt, and come dramatically. we found out a week ago since 2009. you know, some advantage, the top 1% is something that i can't

imagine. question is will that be an agent of change is digging deeper, maybe we all hope we grow, and evolve, see things that maybe we could not see just just a day or the week before i held with phil on our own. obama is in one of those, the necessity of the mother of -- mother -- necessity is the mother of invention moments. i mean, you mentioned roosevelts. i will finish by reading three paragraphs, which i think goes right to your question. a lot of people ask and of thinking. >> we will be done.

of all the changes that occurred on roosevelts once protect them promote a kind of desirable balance in society, the equilibrium. the reforms were different than those that come before. shifted the basic balance of power between washington and new york, public and private, worker and boehner, server and speculator with the 45 -- legal and illegal, the balance is set out so carefully to wing down the checks and balances within the government itself. the most oft quoted line in fdr's first inaugural address, we have nothing to fear, but fear itself. it was followed by a stern words , for gun to history. the enemies in new york.

talk about training. base by the failure of credit they have proposed only the landing of more money. stripped of the war of profits by which to induce the balls. it resorted to equitation's pleading cheerfully for a restored confidence they know only the rules as an addition which is what some of us have been called in the baby boom generation. they have no vision. whether is no vision the people perish. and then a final paragraph. there's many ways to understand the vision my main. they create a new technology or creation, the leaders foreside distance -- distant consequences the prudent man's reserve about the extent to which complexity

can be mastered in the future known, people's gut level sense that something better lies down the path of hard work and fair play. the confidence of the nation rests on trust and can endure for years after the stress has been broken, it cannot endure if the foundation of trust is not at some point and. confidence is the inventor real residue of material actions. justly enforce laws, sound investments, some legal structures. the will consider decisions of experts and professionals. conferences' the public face of competence. separating the two coming gaining the trust without turning it is the age-old work of confidence. thank you.

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en. >> a short author into view from the campaign 2012 club bus. >> what qualities in a candid it will incentivize voters to hire or fire them? >> it is not exactly the way i approach the question in the book because that is really up to the voters. voters have a variety of different characteristics that they consider important. empirically the characteristic that voters find most important in candid it's, that is the primary determinant of the choice. the second characteristic this prior experience.

those of the two factors of those considered most timely when deciding who they want to hire a fire. >> in your book you compare competitive elections with the structure of corporations that when an employee is not performing the should be fired. what is a disconnected to competitive elections and the system that you discuss in your book? with the disconnect is that there are actually a lot of different definitions of a competitive election. one of the things i talk about is the fact that people have conflicting definitions of what a competitive election is. for example, too closely associated definitions of a competitive election are elections in which a final vote tallies, the candid it's our clothes, and elections about which we are uncertain about the results. there are related to on the different definitions of the competitive election, so we talk about and certainly, for example. what does that mean? an election is a way to hire or fire somebody, and you have an

incumbent running for office and essentially what is happening is there is a -- there is an employee his contract is up for renewal. to renew that? that is literally what an election with an incumbent is. let's think about what it means to have a competitive election by the uncertainty definition. if it is an election about which we're uncertain and there are some sort of ran an elephant, and a competitive election in the case of an incumbent is tossing a coin to decide whether or not to fire an employee. that is not a good idea. if you want a strong company, what you do is retained the employee for doing a good job and fired the employees are doing a bad job deterministic week. what you don't do this with a coin. but that is what competitive elections are if we go with the definition of uncertainty. there are other definitions with competitive elections which run into other problems, but the basic issue is if you think about elections as an employment mechanism, most of the

definitions in a competitive election don't really make a lot of substantive sense. xi. >> what suggestions do you make. >> the argument of the book is a c-span2 del the company what you do is posed a credible threat to fire employees who do not do a good job. the purpose of doing that is to give employees incentives to do a good job as a result they don't get fired. if you still have to fire people, that means something went wrong. the argument i make in the book is that elections should operate in a way since that date have a determinist threat to fire incumbents to do a bad job, and that threat other than to behave in such a way as to avoid being fired, that is how i think the electoral system should operate. and what that does is avoid most definitions of competitive election because if that happens then we will not observe the elections that are close or marginal. we will observe concerned

elections, a lot of turnover in elected officials. it will not see most definitions of a competitive election. the important thing a are you in the book is that we pose a credible threat. but it is always the case with threat, you have to carry out the threat that means something went wrong. >> out the use suggest that we pose a credible threat to the candidates to take the election process more seriously or at least the political performance? >> that is the voters is a possibility. there's nothing we can do to force voters oppose that global threat. we can play around the election law to some degree, but ultimately voters are not willing to pose that threat, there is nothing that we can do in a policy sense to impose that threat, which is the responsibility of voters, just that is is the responsibility of employers going back. and if employers do not pose that threat, there's nothing you can do structurally to create the threat. >> two is the audience that you would like to read your book?

>> the book is also targeted to some degree as political opponents. there is a common argument in politics among abundance that we need more. i don't think these arguments are very well sought out. part of the problem with these arguments is that they come from the belief that elections are analogous to markets. elections of like markets. we need competition, therefore we need competitive elections. i don't think that analogy holds. more useful to think of the elections as employment mechanisms, which is what they are. so essentially the audience for the book, people and hoping who will read it of the people who make these kinds of arguments about the need for competition in a democracy and the idea that elections are comparable to markets, which i think there not. >> with the campaigns, 2012, what changes would you like to see